


Organizing the Library

by silveradept



Category: Beauty and the Beast (1991)
Genre: F/M, Fluff about Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2020-02-16 04:25:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18684115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silveradept/pseuds/silveradept
Summary: Belle has embarked on the task of organizing the Beast's library. He wants to help her succeed, and then realizes that some of the volumes may not be fit for a lady he wants to woo.





	Organizing the Library

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wingsyouburn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wingsyouburn/gifts).



Belle's eyes widened as she entered the library. 

"Oh, no, no, no!" she said, looking out at the immaculately cleaned and polished surfaces that to any other eye, would have signaled the library was ready for use. When Belle had left it last night, however, she had piled books on most of the available surfaces.

"Well, maybe..." she said, going over to one of the shelves she had originally targeted. Running her finger along the titles of the books, her frown turned into a scowl. 

"Belle?" the Beast called, entering the library from the door on the other side. "Cogsworth said you would be here."

"They put it all back!" Belle shouted at him. He winced at the clear upset in her tone. He decided to forge ahead anyway.

"Yes, they did," he said. "You had them all in piles everywhere but the shelves. It took them quite a while to put everything back on the shelves and make everything neat again."

Belle sighed. "I was trying to arrange them so they would be easier to find." 

"Easier to find?" The Beast looked confused. "To hear you talk about them, it seemed like you already knew where any volume was, and had read it twice to make sure you had it memorized."

Belle still glowered at him, but softer than when she had started. "They are lovely, and there are so many of them, but they don't seem to be arranged by any way that I can understand," Belle said.

"They were probably arranged once by my father at some point in his life," the Beast said, shrugging as best he could. "Perhaps you would find them easier if we placed all the red books together, or books of the same size on the same shelf?"

The Beast had known that Belle was capable of being terrorized. He had done it to her enough in the early stages of her captivity. He had not known that suggesting a perfectly sensible scheme for organizing books would produce the same terror as when she saw him fully for the first time.

After expressing her abject terror in such a way, Belle sighed. "I would like to write a letter to the bookseller in town," she said, sounding defeated. "Perhaps he could help me determine a way of organizing this library so that things will stay in at least some sort of place and order." 

"There are no messengers who stop by this castle," the Beast said gently.

"I know," Belle said. "And you are unlikely to let me go myself."

"I thought you liked it here," he said, still gently. "There is nothing to want for here. Not food, not books, nor servants to take care of your needs. Why should you want to leave?"

"There are no humans in this castle," she said. "I fear that I will always talk to my dishes and expect them to respond to me."

The Beast again thought of the enchanted mirror he had been cursed with, so that he could see the things that he would be denied. But it could only show. Even if she saw the bookseller, she could ask him no questions and receive no responses.

"Perhaps I can help," he ventured. "At the least, I can apologize for putting away the books by helping you put them away properly."

He felt offended by the clear skepticism that Belle displayed, but he supposed it was well-deserved.

"And I would appreciate the opportunity to get to know you better," he added, hoping that the opportunity for conversation might bring her around to accepting his help.

Belle gave him a long look. The Beast was uncomfortable with the silence. He was unaccustomed to being refused, but Mrs. Potts had told him in no uncertain terms that if he wanted even the possibility of Belle falling in love with him, he would have to get used to being told no.

"All right," Belle said. "We can start with natural philosophy."

The Beast carefully let out the breath he had been holding in when she turned her back to him. 

"Where should I start?" he asked. It was a grand library, full of volumes of books, and he realized now that he knew even less than he had thought about where any of them were. It hadn't seemed important to know, before he met Belle.

"Anywhere," she said. "If it looks like a title that might have to do with natural philosophy, then pull it off the shelf and put it on one of the tables." 

"Then," he said, bounding up to the shelves right next to her, "I think I will start here."

It became clear to Belle that while the Beast clearly knew what natural philosophy was, he didn't know it well enough to see, just by reading a title or seeing an author, whether it should be part of that collection. They worked together in silence until Lumiere arrived with the call to dinner.

The next day, she went back to the library to continue her task. Soon after she began, he arrived to help. Remembering his discomfort from yesterday, she asked if he would be more confident in organizing books on politics, which he readily agreed to.

"Why do you love books so much?" he asked her after he moved a stack onto one of the tables.

"They don't ask me questions about when I'm going to give them up and get married to the town's most eligible bachelor," she replied, setting her own stack on a different table. 

A moment later, when the stunned silence set in, she realized what she had said. "I'm so sorry!" she apologized. "I was asked that question so much in the village. Everyone seemed interested in why I wasn't thrilled that the 'most-attractive man in town' wanted me to be his girlfriend, and then, his wife."

"Did he have land?"

"No." 

"Money?"

"Some. Certainly enough to have his own seat at the tavern and a fawning audience when he went to drink. Not that the town wouldn't gladly have bought him his fill just to hear his _stories_." 

The Beast set another book in his pile. "I trust, from your tone of _clear admiration_ , that you found his stories to be lacking."

Belle laughed a little. "Yes," she said, still smiling. "Boasts of improbable hunts and conquests, and only sometimes was he talking about animals." 

The Beast's eyebrows raised, and he tilted his head.

"He sounds like a perfect match for a beautiful young woman with more interest in books and learning than big...muscles," he joked, realizing the impropriety of what he was about to say at the last moment.

"Honestly," she replied, turning back to the shelves. "I think he was only ever interested in me because I refused him. Repeatedly."

"His loss," the Beast murmured before returning to his own shelves, reading the titles of those still on the shelves. There were more treatises of war here than he had realized before. Had his father intended to teach him about combat and commanding armies, or had he thought that stories of war were interesting to a young boy? He would never know.

Perhaps if he had been learning about fairy tales and court manners instead of spoons, knives, and falconry, he could have avoided his current situation. But that would have meant not meeting Belle, and something in his heart rebelled at the idea of never having met Belle. She _was_ beautiful, that any eye could see, but how many had the privilege of seeing her while she was intently working and using her mind? When she was concentrating on something, it seemed like she started to step out from behind the woman she presented to the rest of the world. He liked to see her in these unguarded moments, being her true self.

The Beast paused. One of the titles he had been skimming jumped back out at him. It was a book of love poems. Perhaps he could present it to her as a way of gauging her interest in him.

And then he remembered what _else_ there might be in the library, and desperately hoped that Lumiere would arrive soon to call them to dinner before she could discover what other tastes his father might have had in books.

He did his best to concentrate on the task at hand and help Belle when she needed to move a particularly heavy stack, and the rest of the afternoon passed without incident.

He headed in to the library early the next day, gathering a few of the servants to try and scour the library of anything that might be unseemly for her to see.

"Like this," he was saying to them, pointing at a copy of a book.

"The School for Young Girls," Belle read off the spine of the book from behind him, having come in without being heard some time ago.

If it were possible for his blush to be seen through all the fur, he would surely be a brilliant scarlet, the Beast thought.

"And what might I find at this school?" she asked, a hint of amusement in her voice. "So many men say that women just can't undertake a rigorous education. We're too pretty to have any brains."

The Beast gathered his breath. His servants were trying hard not to laugh, but each of them had a twinkle in their eye that told him they would offer no help to get him out of this situation.

He turned to face her. "It is about getting an education," he started, "but not one that a person goes to school for."

"Of course not," Belle said lightly, sliding off to the side and moving toward the books. "Of course, from what I understand, there are very few facts in that book and significantly larger amounts of fantasy."

"You knew," he accused, stung by his embarrassment.

Belle turned around, and the playful expression she wore vanished, replaced by a look of terror at his anger.

"Oh, I'm sorry, please forgive me," she said. "I didn't mean to hurt you like that."

The Beast held her gaze for a moment, before turning his head and throwing the book onto one of the remaining empty tables.

"I am...unused to being embarrassed and played with this way," he rumbled, trying to remember to use words rather than the anger he felt.

She closed the distance between them and touched his arm gently. "I'm truly sorry," she said. "Yes, I knew. I grew up in the bookstore as much as I did in my home. After a while, the men forgot I was there, reading, while they talked about prints and books and the right medicines to use for a pleasurable night. Most of the men in town asked for them because they assumed no woman would look at them when they could chase Gaston.

"Gaston, I think, wanted them to decorate the room he was going to take his bride to on their wedding night." She shuddered at the thought. "It seemed like he was in more often than others, and asking about different books than the others. I don't know what he had planned, but it gave me another reason to avoid him."

The Beast blinked at her. He had long since learned that Belle was no simpering girl, but every time they talked, some new depth appeared from her. Would every woman be met be this same way? Were the servants this way and he had simply not noticed?

And, most importantly, would every beautiful woman he met cast a spell over him? As far as he knew, Belle was not skilled in the same magic as the Enchantress that had cursed him, but she had some magic that he reacted to all the same.

"I also knew these were in your collection," she continued. "I had been separating them out for their own space somewhere in the castle, but then they got all jumbled back in when all the books were put back."

"Then I am doubly embarrassed for having exposed you to them a second time," he said. "Lumiere! Find a suitable place for these books! I am going to return to looking for politics books on these shelves...and sulk."

Belle giggled behind her hand, as much at his facial expression as his choice of words, no doubt. She tried to school herself back into seriousness, but Lumiere would be no help.

"Yes, Master!" Lumiere said, a mischievous look in his eyes. "I will personally deliver them to Belle's bedside for late night reading."

"Fine," he said, turning back toward the shelves before realizing what he had assented to. "No!" He subsided into a loud grumble as Belle laughed again.

"Have pity on your poor master, Lumiere," she said, managing not to break out into laughter. "Deliver the books to his bedside so that he may reacquaint himself with whether they are suitable for my library."

The Beast very pointedly ignored them all, taking two books from the shelf and placing them in the politics pile. Some companionable silence would certainly be welcome, he thought, if for no other reason that to prevent him from continuing to purchase so much land for his mausoleum. Belle turned to her own shelf after whispering instructions to Lumiere about where she wanted those books, and then sent him and the servants in their way to gather from the shelves.

Thankfully, there were no further incidents that day until the Beast retired for the evening. One book adorned his nightstand, with a note attached.

> This one is my favorite. See if you can guess why.
> 
> -Belle

Opening the book, the Beast was amused to see a second note had been hidden inside.

> If you are interested in winning her heart, this is the book you should study, Master.
> 
> -L
> 
> On this, remarkably, we are agreed.
> 
> -C

He flipped to the first page of the story.

"Once upon a time there lived a king and queen who were grieved, more grieved than words can tell, because they had no children. They tried the waters of every country..."


End file.
